Metal-Organic Frameworks—The New Jack of All Trades for (Inorganic) Chemists

摘要

What does the term metal-organic framework (MOF) mean to you? Do you have a spontaneous picture that comes to mind? I have to admit that I for one didn't really have one, and in fact probably had a blind spot in my perception, until I noticed, while leafing through Angewanclte Chemie in 2004, an article that opened my eyes, namely the Review "Functional Porous Coordination polymers" by Susumu Kitagawa el al. on page 2388. The discussion is about zeolite-like solids that exceed all known materials in terms of porosity by orders of magnitude, while offering fascinating new dimensions of molecular design with enormous internal surfaces and spaces. Possible applications therefore include not only energy storage (for example in form of hydrogen and methane) or the catalysis, but also biomed-icine, sensors, microelectronics, and more. MOFs form when inorganic and organic building blocks are combined to build coordination compounds with network structures. The art of well-planned synthesis of network compounds (reticular structures) has become very sophisticated. In the last decade alone, more than 20000 MOFs have been described, as can be seen from a graph (Figure 1) from the publication by O. M. Yaghi el al. (Science, 2013,341, 974), and there are hardly any issues of Angewandie Chemie in which something new about MOFs cannot be found. International MOF conferences have been held regularly since 2008, such as this year in Kobe (28th September to 1st October).